Ila Nagar studies meaning as it is conveyed in everyday language use. Her disciplinary homes are sociolinguistics, language and politics, language, sexuality, and gender, and critical postcolonial studies. She is currently working on two book-length projects. The first, under contract with Cambridge University Press, studies the impact of specific types of linguistic devices in the broadening of social and legal norms in post-1947 India. The book argues that expansion of social norms which is primarily a linguistic choice has a causal effect on legislative and judicial actions against minorities in India. The second book studies entanglements between religion and secularism in legal proceedings and legislative agendas in the context of India. 

Ila Nagar's first book, Being Janana: Language and Sexuality in Contemporary India, is an ethnographic study of jananas, a community of subaltern male sex workers in Lucknow, India. The book explores how language—by them and about them—is used to construct their complex identities and roles within family structures, perpetuate violence against them, and affect their economic and political positions. Conducted over twelve years, this book provides an integrated picture of janana lives through a multidisciplinary approach.

Ila has developed several undergraduate and graduate classes that underline the complexity of lived experiences in South Asia and South Asian diasporic communities in the United States.